Sunday, November 2, 2014

"In this house – a former industrialist’s villa built in 1914-15 and used from 1941 to 1945 by the SS as a conference centre and guest house – on 20 January 1942, fifteen high-ranking representatives of the SS, the NSDAP [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei] and various ministries met to discuss their cooperation in the planned deportation and murder of the European Jews.

The SS representatives reported to the state secretaries present on the murder campaigns which had been carried out by German Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union since August 1941 and on the killing methods already in use.

What is today referred to as the "Wannsee Conference" was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, Head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). His deportation expert Adolf Eichmann drew up a protocol of the meeting, which was found in 1947 in the foreign ministry files. The Wannsee Protocol documents with alarming clarity the plan to murder all European Jews and the active participation of Germany’s public administration in this genocide."